What is a TV Dashboard?

A TV Dashboard is a tool used to display key business metrics in real-time on a television or wallboard within an office. TV Dashboards have evolved over the years from office whiteboards to office monitors that continuously display a business’ data. This monitoring tool displays KPI information on a TV so that offices are able to visualize their productivity and targets at all times. When the information is clear and accessible to everyone, the responsibility of objectives and improvement is shared among all those who play a part.

Gone are the days of cubicles and blank ‘eggshell’ coloured walls. Today’s most progressive offices are as efficient in their work flow as they are in their office design, so it’s no surprise that the two go hand-in-hand?! This relationship creates an opportunity to foster both creativity and productivity by investing in the hardware and software to display information on your dashboard to a TV in your office.

Wallboard vs. Dashboard

What’s the difference between a wallboard and a dashboard? Generally, a dashboard is on your desktop or mobile device, while a wallboard is a screen mounted in your office or business. However, when it comes to TV dashboards, there is no difference. Both have the ability to project data dashboards onto a screen. A wallboard is another name for a TV dashboard.

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How does a TV Dashboard Keep Your Office on Track

The answer is simple. Dashboards can dramatically improve your business. How you ask? TV Dashboards give businesses a clear view into their KPIs and allow all employees to have a better understanding of performance. Here are 3 reasons why every business should use TV Dashboards to display key metrics:

8 reasons why a TV Dashboard will be your most effective office investment.

Transparency

Using TV Dashboards around an office helps promote transparency at all levels of the organization. When employees, management, and executives get a view of the same key metrics, the entire business is able to work and create priorities based around the same targets and goals. It’s also a great way to celebrate success and give all those in an office, in your department and beyond, a glimpse into the impact of your accomplishments on the bigger picture.

Real-time business decisions

TV Dashboards let teams monitor and track key business metrics in near real-time. Imagine reacting to a drop in performance or similar urgent issues as soon as they happen, rather than at the end of the month. Your team also saves hours on ad-hoc reporting and meetings to discuss results. Dashboards are transforming how businesses and employees operate day-to-day.

Metrics-driven

Gone are the days where decisions had to be made based on gut feelings.Teams are exposed to real-time data on a daily basis and can see the results of their hard work. TV Dashboards keep teams focused on key business metrics and help to promote data-driven decision making throughout an entire organization.

Tips for setting up effective TV Dashboards

By this point, it’s easy to see the benefits of using TV Dashboards and to understand how they can transform a business. When looking to build and implement TV Dashboards around an office, there are 3 components that you should keep in mind:

Actionable

When building a TV Dashboard, ask yourself “What am I communicating and what do I expect my teammates to do with it?” The purpose of creating TV Dashboards is to build a dashboard that teams can make decisions from. Your wallboard should display key metrics and targets that are actionable.

Ask yourself, “Do these metrics help me make decisions?” or “Are these metrics helping me understand my priorities?” TV Dashboards should be created to help grow your business and empower your teams with the data they need to make real-time decisions and reach their goals.

Focus on Designing a Dashboard that Fits Your Office

The most impactful wallboards are seamlessly integrated into an office space in both design and positioning. Having a good dashboard layout can completely change the way employees use the data to make decisions. There are 3 guiding principles to good dashboard design:

The information most often checked by users goes in the upper left-hand corner;

Related metrics should be grouped together; and

Metrics that need to be compared should be next to each other.

If you want your TV Dashboard to be effective, remember that less is often more. Having a simple and concise design makes it easy for employees to understand what the data is trying to tell them. Only highlight key metrics that have a real effect on teams and decision making. Just because data is available doesn’t mean it has to be included on a wallboard.

Your wallboard may look nice above that plant in the corner, but is that really what’s important for a tool that is meant to impact performance? Quite simple,the answer is no. Unfortunately, that cactus can’t improve your company's ROI. What’s important is where the wallboard is displayed in proximity to the team it is intended guide. Maybe it’s best to set up multiple screens throughout the office by department or for a smaller office, consider displaying different dashboards on an automatic rotation--in this case, set up your TV screen in a place that is convenient, not distracting! Unless you’re a doctor's office looking to distract anxious patients in the waiting room, it is critical to remember that these TV displays are set up in an office to drive performance, not divert attention! Make it easy on the eyes and strategically set up on a wall where it will be of the best use.

Easy

In order for TV Dashboards to be effective, they should be easy too. Ideally, the dashboard is visible to the entire team from the moment the first employee walks into the office, to the time the last walks out. Depending on a team member to cast the dashboard to a screen creates interruptions and unreliability. Displaying your dashboards with little friction will help make them successful. The most effective dashboards are the wallboards that are easy to set up and continuously monitor.

How to turn your dashboard into a wallboard?

Dashboards published as live links are ideal for users who use wallboards displaying one dashboard per display, who need to share their dashboard with a broader group within their organization, or who wish to share with external users. Klipfolio users can publish a dashboard (with or without a password) as a shareable link.

Wallboards are extremely different from the laptop or desktop screen you may have been using to display your dashboard, but that doesn’t mean you have to redesign your entire dashboard. A sign of a good dashboard and display device is that it is adaptive no matter what the screen. Before investing in either, double check that they can project information as intended by your design. There are a number of devices you can use to set up a TV Dashboard, including Rise Vision, Airtame and Chromecast among others. Think about how you want to use your wallboard, ask yourself: do you want to put it up every morning or should it automatically display? Pick your projecting device based on what works best for the needs of your office.

Cut down time on KPI reporting with a TV Dashboard

Live links mirror KPIs from your business dashboard, which means that they are continuously updated on your wallboard. Allocating time to create dashboards with the KPIs your executives always request in their end of month KPI report will simplify the reporting process and create the habit of monitoring these metrics at all times, not just at end of month for reporting or during a KPI presentation.

Foster teamwork and focus on performance

Another great aspect of TV Dashboards, they foster teamwork in the workplace. Get everyone in the organization talking about each other's performance. Prompt questions from other departments and get everyone talking.

Using a wallboard to display a dashboard is a great way to keep performance metrics at the forefront of your team's mind. Displaying dashboards on wallboards demonstrates the significance of these KPIs to your entire team, and others within the organization so everyone’s in the know. Take a look at how our marketing team uses a wallboard in the office.

How to pick the right KPIs for your TV Dashboard?

Monitoring the health of your business involves tracking many different metrics; far too many to put on one dashboard, let alone display on a TV in your office. For this reason, you can’t just have one TV dashboard.

If you are already using digital dashboards in your office, you know that having a dashboard for each department is one of the most important elements to success. The same goes for wallboards. Dashboards should be organized so that depending on an individual's role or department, accessing the data they need takes no time at all. With a TV Dashboard, this simplicity means that data it’s right in front of them.

Marketing TV Dashboard

The TV Dashboard in your marketing department should be specific to the process you are monitoring if you have multiple, or general if you are using one TV for the entire department. With marketing in particular, teams typically have numerous dashboards ranging from web analytics metrics to email marketing KPIs and everything in between. Make sure your marketing dashboard displays the metrics that have a direct impact on your team’s performance everyday.

Before selecting your metrics, ask yourself: will this metric have a direct impact on my team? Less is more, so definitely reconsider combining all your dashboards into one for a TV wallboard. Do however, pull together the KPIs from each that have universal importance. Keep in mind though, the metrics you select should be related to one another. View Klipfolio's live Marketing Dashboards.

Developer Wallboard

This Developer Dashboard displays a project burndown and release tracker to help keep the DevOps team on the same page. This TV dashboard also displays Unresolved issues, WIP limits, and feature vs. bug investment to help the team keep the website performing and tackle any issues that come up right away. View Klipfolio's live DevOps Dashboard.

Sales TV Dashboard

Sales teams operate in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment that demands they stay up-to-the-minute on the latest opportunities and challenges. The following example is our Salesforce Dashboard.

Salesforce is your automated CRM solution, and your sales team can't seem to get enough of it. They want to be dialed into the latest opportunities, be notified when an important deal is closed, and know the status of new leads. And most of all, your sales team wants that data to be in real-time and easily accessible. View Klipfolio's live Salesforce Dashboard.

Call Center Wallboard

There are many different call center dashboards to display in your office. A call center TV dashboard could serve a specific purpose, such as a Call Status Dashboard or focus more on metrics over time such as in our Call Center KPI Dashboard example.

Consider what metrics your call center team wants to constantly monitor. The following example focuses on four key day-to-day call center metrics, as well as team performance over time.

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